“Remember,” resumed the doctor, “you would have the whole of to-day to account for; it’s not as though you wouldn’t have some very awkward questions to answer the moment you got back to school.”
And again the lad marvelled at this intuition into public-school conditions on the part of one who could have no first-hand knowledge of those insular institutions. But this fresh display of understanding only confirmed him in his resolve.
“I trust you, sir,” said he; “haven’t you done enough for me to make me? I put myself, as you say, absolutely in your hands; and I’m grateful to you for all you’ve done and whatever you mean to do!”
“Even though it comes to hiding with us here in London?”
“No matter what it comes to,” cried Pocket, strangely exalted now, “so long as my people never know!”
“They may think you dead.” He thought of saying that he wished he was; but it would not have been true; even then it would have been a lie, and Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.
“That would be better than knowing what I have done,” was what he said; and in his exaltation he believed no less.
“You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?”
“It is final—absolutely—so far as I am concerned.”
And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and fairness of the doctor’s warnings served but to strengthen that resolve. But Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the matter with a clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less wisely, to brood on it alone.